I began composing a thought that included the word "heartbreaking" before glancing to the left and seeing Steve's comment. I think for me, the fact that not each of the shots in this series is heartbreaking (for example, the boy hopping the train suggests happy youth, freedom and hope) reinforces the heartbreaking quality of the whole.

Yes, I felt the same way about these. Stephen, as the father of a young child, you probably have a particular sensitivity with these images -- the vulnerability of exposure that came with poverty then, of course most affecting when thought of in its effects on the children.

Well, the Chinese haven't loaned me any money, the current Depression has had and is having material effects in this area that are hardly more muted than a scream of pain, and worse yet, the structure of belief and value, founded in a largely rural society, upon which the New Deal programs were based, is no longer anything but a faint memory. Those same "country" areas which were once the bedrock are now the sites of multiple fracture, as the various "tea party" factions clash over the who and how of constructing some kind of fantasmal new American Business Reich.

The photos speak so plainly, the story they told then and the implications for now can be felt in the heart. When did we become people who could not be trusted with the truth, for surely it was not always so?